atomizer

win xp pro... i just recently found out about "RAM disk" tools and am looking for comments/advise from those who know more than i -- which shouldn't be hard currently, i have 1 GIG (2 x 512) of RAM installed on an MSI K8T NEO FSR. i just ordered 2 GIGs (1 GIG x 2) to replace the existing RAM for the sole purpose of using a RAM disk. what i'm wanting to do is dedicate at least 512 MB to the RAM disk and then install my most frequently used programs in RAM (Firefox, T-Bird, etc.). obviously the purpose here is to drastically decrease application load times and increase their responsiveness. in order to backup and preserve the data i run 2 scrips: 1 at start-up which copies the files to RAM, and 1 at shutdown which copies data back to disk (to preserve changes, etc.). in addition to a few programs to be installed in the RAM disk, i'd also like to hear any advice on how to load various OS components on the RAM drive, as well as how to go about it. for instance, is it worth it to copy "explorer.exe" to a RAM disk? and what other components can/should be copied? what about drivers, services, etc.?

@MJC -- if you have (or think you'll have) enough people interested in your project, you may be able to cut down on your code by making a nice base that would allow for plug-ins???

Omega

i have a great deal more respect for Linux, it's user base (in general) and it's developers. unfortunately, i've never made the switch. part of the reason is that i've become so familiar with windows and other reasons include awful crappy drivers (minimal drivers that severely cripple the hardware) and hardware support. yeah, it's getting better, but it's taking a lot of time and still, IMO, has a good bit to go. i'm also a gamer, though i do less and less of it as i get older, and Linux sure isn't a gaming OS by a long shot. xp pro + nLite + 9,999 other tweaks and i have an OS i like, that's easy to use, very fast and that runs most any software i want while being very stable.

very good piece of advice. also, be SURE the program you're installing doesn't contain any "add-ons"/spyware/adware/nagware/etc.. it is my experience that, in general, the open source guys write better installers and cleaner applications.

brother, i can more than sympathize with ya! i've been threatening to switch to Linux for years, but have become so familiar with wintendo and how to FORCE it to act the way i want, that i just haven't bothered. i'm no expert by a long shot, but the registry is one of 2 major reasons i dislike windoze. i think it's OK to store system wide, OS only settings in the reg, but i hate the fact that 99% of software developers insist on storing their settings there. then, when you uninstall, there's often a boat load of crap left behind that's next to impossible to root out by hand (and of all the "reg cleaners" that i know of, none of them are able to find everything). to my knowledge (someone correct if wrong), one of the purposes of the registry is to SPEED up the OS and the applications you run on it. well, BULL! when you have a junked up reg with 30,000 garbage entries from s/w developers that have no clue how to write a good installer, that speed gets eaten away piece by piece. i think ALL settings, outside of the core OS stuff, should be stored in its own program group. to my knowledge, that's the way Linux does it.

update the BIOS maybe?

i've been fighting with codecs ever since removing WMP with nLite. i thought i'd found the perfect answer in the ffDshow package as it seemed to handle playing most everything. then i decided to encode AVI's to DVD and, low and behold, "suitable decompresser not found" (this was using AVI2DVD). so i went surfing yet again for a different package and i tried all of the popular ones i know of. for one reason or another, i got rid of them. then i stumbled on the theorica codec pack. so far, this seems like a much cleaner package than any of the rest and it seems to work well. anyone else use it? oh, yeah, as for media players... MPC and, for audio, foobar2000! both are fantastic!

god thats alot of providers i didnt know there were that many out there <{POST_SNAPBACK}> yeah, and your website says you have 72 hours to incorparate ALL of them! OR I'M COMMIN' AFTER YA

Obviously this is a "touchy" subject and, in fact, some people (many many) WILL be offended. That is understandable and it is also unavoidable. I have a strong admiration for people like Ryan and Nuhi who spend enormous amounts of time to develop, support and deliver the outstanding applications/utilities they do... and for FREE yet! Having said that, there is always room for something NEW. The developers of many (and i would easily go so far as to say "most") applications out there were, in fact, inspired by the ideas and applications that others have created. What MJC is doing appears to be no different -- he realizes how the functionality of other ideas could be rolled-up into something even better (or at least that's his goal). It is quite obvious from one of Nuhi's previous posts here that he feels threatened, at least a little. I don't know what happened when MJC asked Nuhi for the source, but i would hope that he (MJC) did not act like a ranting baby when he was turned down. @MJC -- Your are obviously setting yourself up for a beating if you pursue your application and intend to make it public, especially by announcing it here. My advise is: DO NOT LET OTHERS DISSUADE YOU IN ANY WAY !!! Go for it! Sure, people are going to be offended... SO WHAT! I'm all for your idea, even though i have a great admiration for Nuhi and others. It's a double edge sword and there's nothing you can do about it. Some supporters of other communities are going to try to poke holes in your idea (as they already have) not because it's not a good one, but because they feel dedicated to something else and don't want yours to suceed. Let them! You can use that to your advantage (to make yours better, hopefully). Keep in mind that many of these same people will be silently "testing" your application at some point in the future As far as your application itself, i, like others, hate bloat-ware. However i don't see your idea as falling under that category at all. I think the idea of one application that will handle building an install, slipstreaming hotfixes/service packs, applying tweaks, etc., is an outstanding one. I would guess that most people using other applications, such as nLite, are using them along with other utilities anyway, so rolling up the functionality of these utilities is a natural step in the right direction IMO. The only thing more i'd like to offer is that, for anyone wishing to contribute to this project, you may want to be sure that MJC will, in fact, be able to release his app to the public. Good luck MJC!

ah, i should also add... if your MB doesn't have an integrated SCSI controller, you'll have to buy an add-on one. i can offer no advise here as my mobo has an on-board controller. the only other caveat i can think of is that, when you install the OS (windows anyway), you'll have to press F6 to load the driver for your controller so that windows will recognize the drives (just watch setup carefully and you'll be prompted when to hit F6). a floppy with the driver for the controller will be needed. there's more advanced ways of installing the controller silently if you poke around on the forums here, but hitting F6 works just fine. if you have an on-board controller, then the floppy probably came with the MB. if you're going to use multiple drives, in addition to the RAID drives, you may find that the best way to install the OS is to actually UNplug the power leads for ALL of your additional hard drives. this will force windows to install on your RAID array. EDIT... keep in mind that the Raptor's are SATA also i don't know if the drives include the cables. you'll have to check that.

i think you'll be very pleased if you haven't yet checked them out, take a look at the WD Raptor drives. if all you want to to do is store the OS and programs on them, you can use the smaller 36.7 G drives (two, 36.7 G drives in a RAID 0 array give you 73.4 G of storage. for me, that is WAY more than enough for the OS and all my programs, and i install a lot of programs). you can pick them up at NewEgg for $116 each (NewEgg is a great vendor).

here's about 1,400 providers list of providers one of the providers i use and like very much is MyRealBox. this service is completely free - NO ADS/promos/etc. at all! very little SPAM. unfortunately they are not signing any new accounts, nor have they been for some time (years?). and while i'm at it... PopTray -- the very best, multiple account email checking utility on the planet .. very useful for dumping SPAM right off the server without ever seeing it -- especially useful for hotmail and yahoo < YICK!

i'd say that depends, at least in part, on the quality of the hardware you purchase. personally, i always try to buy what i believe to be high quality, name brand drives. however, i'd also say that the failure rate is far less important in a RAID 0 array as long as you either a), don't store important data on it or B), back up data to another drive if you do. since i only run the OS and programs on my RAID 0 array, i'm not overly concerned if i lose a drive since it's easy to just reinstall. i'm also new to RAID though, so i have not had any failures. i'm using the relatively new WD, 10K RPM raptors in my array which, so far, i like very much. they are very fast and very quiet. the faster boot time is because data is read much faster from the drives -- something which carries over to ALL times, not just boot. in my case (can't speak for anyone else), boot time BEFORE the OS loads (POST) is a little longer because of BIOS and my RAID config utility loading and detecting the drives. after POST, everything is faster! that's an awful small price to pay for substantially increased performance during the rest of your (99+%) up time, unless you're planning on rebooting 300 times a day :/

ah, now you want your cake and to eat it too i was going to say no, this is not possible, but then i did a quick search to refresh myself and found out that it is possible... sort of RAID levels

not exactly sure what you're asking... if you're asking why you can't get the same speed from 1 disk on which data is divided into more than 1 chunk, then my answer would be that, no matter how many parts the data is divided into (and, actually, the more parts, the slower the transfer will be), there is only so many heads to read and write data and the that 1 disk spins at only 7200 RPM (as example). with 2 disks, you have 2 drives spinning at 7200 and TWICE the number of heads to read/write. make sense? i suppose another way you could compare a single disk to a 2 disk, RAID 0 array, is to think of it as 1 disk spinning at 14,400 RPM!

someone more knoledgable than i can provide a better answer, but here's my take... i have my OS and all programs on a RAID 0 array. the speed increase is SIGNIFICANT! boot time is cut way down. it's not something that you need some special software to measure -- you'll really FEEL the difference! with a RAID 0 array, spread over 2 disks, you'll have 1/2 of your data on one disk and 1/2 on the other. when you call up a program (for instance), 1/2 of it is loading at 7200 RPM (for example) from 1 drive and the other 1/2 is loading at 7200 RPM from the other drive. in theory, the loading is twice as fast. in reality, it doesn't quite work that way, but, as i said, the speed increase is VERY noticeable. the best speed you can get is always subject to whatever the bottleneck in your system is. this may be your RAM, front-side-bus, hardware, etc., etc.. there's a lot of variables. again i'll provide a word of caution however... if, in a RAID 0 configuration, you lose 1 drive (hard drive failier), then the data on the other dirve is completly useless (lose 1, lose all). obviously this is so because each chunk of data is split among 2 or more drives.

there are a pile of data recovery programs, many freeware. i'm not really familiar with any of them so i won't recommend one. just do a search.

i think your poll will be pretty much useless to you because the best RAID config depends completely on what you want to accomplish and you didn't explain that. if raw speed is more important to you than safeguarding your data, then RAID 0 might be for you. just remember, if you trash one drive, you lose everything! personally, i have my OS and all programs on a 2 disk, RAID 0 array. all my personal data is on a separate SATA drive and all data back-ups and other storage are on yet another SATA drive. to further increase speed (and privacy), i store a bunch of temp files on a RAM drive. this setup give me a very fast system, especially with a pile of other tweaks and, of course, nLite

couple things to try... a different monitor omega driver a different video card, if you have one i've not seen anything like that, though i have had major problems that were due to drives and installing a newer driver will not necessarily cure the problem. you could also try installing an older driver (older than the the last one you used). how long has she had the problem? try to remember when/what may have caused it.

i wouldn't worry about it. heck, some people pay good money to see pink and green spots ok... are the spots in the images only, outside, or both? what OS? how large are the spots? (dead pixals perhaps?)

ah, yes! and so nLite enters the stage!

the oldest box i ran XP on was a P3 800 (intel desktop board) with something just over 700 MB of RAM. i also ran 98 on it for quite some time. i really can't recall which was faster out of the box, but with my usual tweaking (and long before i knew about nLite), XP seemed much more responsive. i'm now running XP on an AMD athlon 64 3200+ with a gig of RAM on 2 WD, 10K RPM drives in a RAID 0 array and, uh, it SINGS! as a matter of fact, it's so fast (how fast is it?), i'm tellin' ya it's SO FAST, that it gets board while i'm typing and goes into hibernation between every word LOL

i'm not a coder, just a 1/2 baked hacker of other peoples code. you'll likely get better answers form other folks here, but here's a couple you can look into: xBasic screenshot python - there's several GUI plugins... or libraries -- whatever ya call 'em xbLite hope that may help

you actually think i can remember as far back as this morning but no, it wasn't that key. i honestly forget what key it was though.